Stamp body and handle construction



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STANLEY E. ANDERSON:

A-r TORN aYs United States Patent 3,023,701 STAMP BODY AND HANDLE CONSTRUCTION Stanley E. Anderson, Niles, Ill. (4101 W. Grand Ave., Chicago 51, Ill.) Filed Aug. 7, 1959, Ser. No. 832,324 1 Claim. (Cl. 101-405) This invention relates to body and handle construction for hand stamps, of the type commonly used by hand and inked on an ink pad to stamp desired information on the surfaces to be marked.

A principal object of the invention is to provide new and improved construction permitting the body and handle portions of hand stamps to be produced more economically than heretofore.

For the most part, hand stamps as heretofore constructed have each comprised a wooden body portion surmounted by a Wooden handle secured to the body portion by being fitted at its lower end into a drilled hole in the body portion, with a rubber stamp glued or otherwise bonded to the bottom of the body portion, and the body portion has usually carried a fixture or other facilities on the front side thereof for holding a label corresponding to the information to be stamped by the hand stamp. In hand-stamp production, it usually costs more to provide a label-holding or attaching portion to the wooden body of the hand stamp than the wooden body itself costs. Other items of excessive cost in hand-stamp production relate to drilling the handle-receiving hole in the stamp body and in producing the handle itself, which usually comprises a turned-out Wood member having a rather accurately sized shank for snugly entering the drilled hole in the body, with one side of the handle machined fiat to indicate the front side of the stamp, and usually hearing the suppliers identification or trademark.

According to the invention, the foregoing and other disadvantages are overcome by constructing the body portion of a hand stamp of hollow extruded transparent plastic material which contains a suitable recess or recesses for receiving a marking strip on which the identity of the stamp may be marked or labeled and is visible through the transparent material of the body portion, thereby greatly lowering the cost of production of stamp bodies. Moreover, a great many stamp bodies of desired specific lengths can be obtained from one long stamp-body extrusion merely by sawing the extrusion into lengths corresponding respectively to the desired stampbody lengths.

Further, according to the invention the extrusion strip from which the stamp bodies are cut may include a longitudinal top channel of sufficient width to receive the rectangular shank of a stamp handle, and the handle and body may be readily bonded together.

Still further according to the invention, the stamp handles may likewise be sawed or otherwise severed from a plastic extrusion, which preferably has a configuration to provide the noted rectangular joining shank of the handle and to provide a flattened front side and a rounded rear side to conform with the usual stamp handle construction. Preferably the stamp handles and the stamp bodies are formed of the same plastic, or of plastics having a common solvent, whereby a stamp handle may be bonded unitarily in the handle-receiving groove to the stamp body by applying the common solvent to each of the parts before fitting them together. Moreover, the usual sponge-rubber stamp member may readily be adhered to the bottom of the plastic stamp body by first applying to the body a coating of the solvent and then pressing the rubber stamp portion tightly into place until the volatile portion of the solvent evaporates to reharden the plastic.

The above-mentioned and other features and objects of this invention and the manner of attaining them will become more apparent, and the invention itself will be best understood, by reference to the following description of an embodiment of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings comprising FIGS. 1 to 8, wherein:

FIGS. 1 to 3 show respectively a front view, a left-end view, and a top view of a hand stamp constructed according to the invention;

FIG. 4 is an end view of the stamp of FIGS. 1 and 3 having an alternative location for the inserted stampinformation strips;

FIGS. 5 and 6 show a top view and a front view of the respective extruded strips from which the body and handle portions of FIGS. 1 to 3 may be cut; and

FIGS. 7 and 8 show views corresponding respectively to FIGS. 2 and 4 of a hand stamp according to the invention but of modified construction.

Referring first to FIGS. 1 to 3, showing the first embodiment of the invention, the hand stamp shown therein comprises three parts, the handle 121, the body portion 101 and the printing strip 115-116.

The handle 121 is preferably cut from a solid plastic bar such as 161}, FIG. 6, having an outline as shown in FIG. 2.

The handle 121 consists of a top part 122 and lower part 123, the top part 122 having a flattened surface 124, for indicating the front side of the stamp and also for having imprinted thereon manufacturers name or trademark, if so desired. The lower part 123 is formed as a rectangular shank, and is preferably so sized that it is received rather snugly in U-channel 103 of the stamp body 101. Preferably, parts 101 and 121 are composed of the same plastic composition or of plastics having a common solvent. Then, before assembly, some of the solvent may be applied to the appropriate surfaces of the two parts, followed by assembly while the parts are partly dissolved at the surface or tacky, causing a firm homogeneous bond to result when the solvent evaporates.

The usual stamp assembly comprises a sponge-rubber pad 116 pre-bonded to a pliable character strip 115. Conveniently, pad 116 may be bonded to the stamp body by wetting the exposed surface at 102 with solvent to render it temporarily tacky, whereupon the parts are pressed firmly together to cause some of the adhering tacky plastic to enter the pores of the sponge rubber of member 116 for a firm bond by the time the solvent has evaporated.

The stamp body 101 is preferably a suitable length cut from a transparent hollow extruded plastic bar such as 150, FIG. 5.

Body 101, as seen in profile in FIGS. 2 and 3, has a cross section of a generally semi-circular structure over a fiat base with a partition 106 extending perpendicularly from the center of the base up to the peak of the semicircle, dividing it into two equal sections which contain longitudinal hollow openings 113 and 114.

The fiat base 1&2 of stamp body 101 is bordered at its front and back sides by front crease 119 and back crease 120. Above creases 119 and 120, the body structure has front wall 104 and back wall 105 joining the top edges of handle-receiving channel 103, further supported from below by medial brace wall 106 resting on base 102 of the body structure.

Creases 119 and 120 accurately define the area for afiixing of the printing strip and its rubber sponge base 116 to the stamp body from below, and provide lower recesses or grooves for receiving information strips 109 and 110, as of paper or light cardboard.

As seen in FIG. 2, the lower part of paper strip 109 rests in crease 119, whereas the upper edge rests in upper front crease or groove 107, the natural friction between the edges of the information strip and the creases being sufiicient to keep the strip in place. Similarly, a paper strip 110 is provided in the back Wall 105 resting in back creases or grooves 108 and 120, indicating another line of information of the stamp.

The letters on information strips 109, 110 are visible through the transparent front and back walls 104, 105 in FIGS. 1 and 3. Strips 109 and 110 preferably show the specific matter to be stamped by stamp layer 115 when the stamp is used. Strip 109 is shown as inserted into the front chamber 113 with the lettering in regular read ing position, but strip 110 is inserted into the back chamber 114 with the lettering upside down as is clear from FIG. 3. This arrangement has the advantage that if, by mistake, the stamp is taken at the wrong side, i.e. its backside turned to the operator, the letters on the information strip 110 appear in an upside-down position, to signal that the stamp should be turned around before use.

FIG. 4 shows an alternative arrangement wherein information strips 111 and 112 are placed on the bottom of the front and back chambers 113, 114. There, preformed transparent back-up strips 117 and 118 are employed to retain information strips 111 and 112, which are visible through the top of the stamp body as seen in FIG. 3.

FIG. illustrates a top view of a length of extruded hollow plastic material 150 from which stamp bodies 101 of FIGS. 1 to 4 may be sawed of desired lengths 154 to 159. The front and rear sides are 151 and 152, and 153 is the handle groove.

FIG. 6 shows a front view of an extruded length 160 of plastic material from which handles 121 of FIGS. 1 to 4 may be cut of desired lengths 163 to 170. The top or grip portion is 161, and 162 is the shank portion.

In the modified construction shown in FIGS. 7 and 8, the stamp body 201 has two angularly disposed bracing partitions 206 and 207 rather than the one partition 106 of the first embodiment. This construction provides three cavities212 to 214. The handle shaft is shown at 221, and the rubber stamp parts at 215, 216.

In FIG. 7,, information strips 209 and 210 correspond to 109 and 110 of FIG. 2.

" invention in connection with specificapparatus, it is to be clearly understood that this description is made only by way of example and not as a limitation to the scope of my invention.

I claim:

A hollow hand stamp body for holding an internal marker strip, said body being composed of extruded transparent material and comprising a base portion for supporting an internal marker strip in a fiat position, a top portion, Wall portions connecting said base portion and said top portion, a medial brace extending between said top portion'and said base portion, and a transparent back-up strip having a first portion superimposed above said fiat marker strip and a second portion extending upwardly from said first portion alongside one of said Wall portions, said back-up strip having one edge terminating said first portion and in engagement with said medial brace and another edge terminating said second portion and in engagement with said top portion.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS Ami-Pu; r 

